Anime dubs tend to use the word “however” a lot. I’m curious if this is a quirk of translation and how/whether it’s affected the speech of English speakers, i.e., do kids who grew up watching anime use “however” often in everyday speech?
Discussion
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@ramsey Possible the translators prefer it over "but"? Sounds more formal than likely intended.
@stephenyeargin I wonder if it’s an idiom in Japanese that doesn’t translate well into English, so the closest we get is “however.”
@ramsey There’s a few words that mean degrees of “but/however” and my fuzzy recollection (I can only recall “demo” offhandedly) is they are all multi-syllabic and very often held for dramatic effect / pause between thoughts. I only use subs, and my sense is that “But” is far more common in them. However, (heh) I think “but” flows much worse if you’re trying to match spoken pacing and doesn’t really vibe with the Japanese voice acting.
@ramsey Put another way, I don’t typically hear “demo” as the sort of airy throwaway / gloss-over modifier we often use “but” as. It’s got, like, gravity to it. I think it’s doing more structural work, like the tides of this sentence are reversing and here is your only warning.
@linc I guess “however” fits the mouth flaps best, in the English translation.
